Skeletons

Housing charge subsidies have not been calculated since April, 2010 due to co-op management problems. I was recently informed by the office that CMHC had asked the co-op to devise new subsidy application forms as they were 15 years out of date. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada ruled in our favour in April, 2011 that the co-op's demand for submission of an ODSP/OW drug card had nothing whatsoever to do with the calculation of one's subsidy. This would have been the catalyst for the revision of the subsidy application forms.

We just received the revised forms and I must say that the form must have been copied and pasted from a rather obscure form on the web, because there is a request to divulge the amount of one's Civil War Pension. Canada has never had a civil war. The American Civil War ended in 1865. There are no survivors!

Are these forms not vetted by CMHC? The co-op has gone from violating the Privacy Act to the most bizarre level of incompetence imaginable.

More to follow ...

After the Meltdown

Our old Property Manager is now our new Property Manager. A newsletter came out to this effect with the following 'Quote of the Month':

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

Abraham Lincoln

These snippets of wisdom and admonitions have been used by many Office Co-ordinators we have had in the co-op. Is it a training exercise to keep all the members in line? The central contents of the newsletter, however, are indicative that we might be on the road to a consistent reconstruction of the co-op, one rake at a time. Garbage and recycling, satellite dishes, no open fire pits, no drugging or drinking in the pathways, parking, break-ins, paying housing charges on time and spring clean up were addressed.

Happy Springtime!

The Occupiers

The co-op is experiencing a number of fledglings, who seem to have lost their way and so, are nesting in one or more of our unoccupied units.

No, they are not birds, they are teenagers who are breaking into units by sliding open a living room window and then using the unit as their very own club house. We assessed one situation the other night; however open back windows have been reported in other vacant units as well. In this particular case, lights were left on and the back door was left open.

These units must be monitored on a daily basis. Moreover, windows should be upgraded to provide peace and security to resident members.

Jigsaw

During the last week of February, I reported in my blog post Foggy Horizon that our Property Manager, employed by the property management company, was no longer with the co-op, but that the property management company was. As of next Monday, the property management company will no longer be in the employ of the co-op, but our previous Property Manager will be.

In the process we are losing our Office Co-ordinator, who is employed by the property management company and who, we all agree, has been the nicest Office-Co-ordinator we've ever had.

The Uprising

Members finally received notification from our Board of Directors and that they have had enough.

The letter states:

For far too long we have heard nothing from our elected and appointed members of the Board of Directors. That is about to change. These pages are going to contain some startling facts, and information that we are facing over the next few months.

However, 3 of the 5 present Board members were the 'elected' members of previous Boards of Directors, so they are, in essence, condemning themselves. Are they not accountable for the lack of communication, the high arrears and the impenetrable support of the Office Co-ordinator, who rarely worked and left the administration in shambles?

The notice also states that the co-op and the property management company 'will part ways' and that an emergency plan will be put into place.

The notice continues ...

The Insolvency By-law, which expires on May 1, 2012, required the Board of Directors to consist of 7 members. We presently have 5 members on the Board. Our By-laws state that 9 members are required to constitute a Board of Directors; therefore, an election will be held in May to ramp up the required numbers.

The notice states that our bookkeeper has made mistakes. The external Board of Directors specifically exclaimed that they were there to ensure good financial management would be in effect; that they were not there to foster a positive social environment. The Board of Directors disastrously failed on those two fronts.

The Board of Directors has hired CHASEO to review our By-laws to bring them into compliance with the Co-operative Corporations Act, The Persons With Disabilities Act, and the Human Rights Code. It is ridiculous for each co-op to 'hire' CHASEO to review their by-laws, when it should be incumbent on The Agency (which receives millions of dollars each year to oversee the housing co-operative movement) to notify and provide co-ops with legally vetted documents in this regard.

It appears that we've had one gigantic sleep over in the co-op in that 19 members did not pay their housing charges in March, 2012. They will be invited to a Board of Directors meeting to discuss their continued membership in the co-op.

Will the Big Snooze soon be over? These and other financial matters will be addressed in the months to come. Stay tuned!

Spring Break

Our sump pump failed Thursday night causing my neighbour's basement floor slab to crack open with a loud bang. On Friday morning I stood on our basement stairs and took the following photo. Only a few areas in our basement were spared because of the unevenness of the floor. We slopped through the water raising things to higher ground if we could.

I called the property management company and after numerous re-directions, I left a message. In the meantime a Board Member was also contacted and later that afternoon a slew of property management employees assessed our situation, the other units in our row, as well as the other sump pump units in our co-op. A plumber was called and by early evening a new sump pump was installed. Later that night an employee came by with a wet/dry vacuum and did an excellent job extracting most of the water in our basement. There's a dank stench brewing in our basement, so we have three fans the circulating air, leaving our front door open in the process.

The failed sump pump was very old and no one can remember when the sumps were last serviced. We used to have the sewers and sump pumps serviced every year and I reminded the co-op by email of this obligation many times over the past year and a half - to no avail. The orange/red failure light on the sump switch was on yesterday, but the sump worked. The serviceman, who returned yesterday to check on this, stated that they had neglected to reset it the night before. This light, which is rather dim and difficult to see, has been on since the day we moved into this unit and the sump pump worked.

This is not the first time that a floor has cracked under hydrostatic pressure from under the floor slab. Ours did - all over the basement - sometime when the unit sat empty for 18 months before we moved in, but the co-op refuses to acknowledge this fact. Now the cracks are wider than ever and water was percolating up through them on Friday. Perhaps the co-op will re-institute yearly sump pump maintenance as per the instructions on CMHC's web site.

Governance

I feel we've reached a plateau of sorts in our co-op. It is not an exhilarating feeling, nor one of despair. There are no more grandiose schemes to upright our co-op. It is what it is and perhaps that is the best way to be, because it's reality based.

We do not receive monthly budget reports, so it's difficult to see where we stand financially. With summer coming we will have many move outs and could end up with a dozen units sitting empty with no money for repairs.

We are in a quandary. Do we continue with property management which appears to be minimalist at the best of times, or do we strike up committees and go it alone? My feeling is that we should bring in good property management - one with a ground perspective, as well as good financial oversight and an abiding respect for members.

Who's Who?

We do not yet know who the President of our co-op is, nor the Vice-President, or Treasurer. We have not yet received a newsletter from our Board of Directors since the election on February 8, 2012. The membership would also like to know if we are going to continue with the present Property Management company, or whether we are going to self manage.

On this very windy Saturday, one can say, 'Everything is up in the air'.